Throwback Thursday, November 14, 2024: Honoring National Native American Heritage Month

In honor of National Native American Heritage Month, we are highlighting several books related to local Native American groups from our library’s Local History Collection throughout the month of November. 

This week we are looking at an one of the earliest written works that details the diverse histories of the Native Americans who inhabited the Hudson River Valley, History of Indian Tribes of Hudson’s River (in two volumes) by Edward Manning Ruttenber.

Edward Manning Ruttenber, a native of Bennington, Vermont, moved to Newburgh at the age of 14, where he took an apprenticeship as a printer for the Newburgh Telegraph. Eventually, Ruttenber would buy the paper, twelve years after his apprenticeship, and acquired several other local publications in the years following. The wealth Ruttenber obtained from these ventures led to his founding of the Newburgh Free Library, the first public library in the city’s history, and assistance in the acquisition of Washington’s Headquarters, Newburgh. 

Although not a trained historian, Ruttenber’s love of history inspired his writing and research pursuits. As his obituary printed in the Proceedings of the New York state historical association, #8 (1907) states: “The hours which other men used for recreation and social intercourse he spent in the quiet of his study, scanning with diligence the records of the past, arranging and classifying its incidents, and fitting together bit by bit the little pieces of fact until they made a harmonious whole and gave to the world some new historical truth which he had rescued from oblivion”. Ruttenber would write two books chronicling what was known of the indigenous peoples of the Hudson River Valley: “Indian Tribes of Hudson’s River” (1872), and “Footprints of the Red Men. Indian Geographical Names in the Valley of Hudson’s River, the Valley of the Mohawk of Some of Them” (1906). 

Ruttenber’s 1872 “Indian Tribes of Hudson’s River”, used what sources and histories were available at the time to describe the interactions between Europeans and the Lenape, Mohican, and Iroquois peoples from the arrival of Henry Hudson in 1609 to 1850. Although the language and writing style is dated, and recent research has either expanded or refuted certain arguments, this work was the first to describe the indigenous peoples of the Hudson River Valley in detail, including the names of prominent tribal leaders, locations of settlements, and customs. Of local interest, is an artist’s rendering of “Maringoman’s Castle”, the structure belonging to a principle chief of the Waoranecks, referenced in the 1756 deed that defined the bounds of the present day Town of Blooming Grove.